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The horror genre thrives
on metaphor, and in exploiting the myth of "vagina dentata," Mitchell
Lichtenstein's grisly B-movie Teeth has found a doozy. From the Latin meaning
"toothed vagina," the myth generally expresses a fear of castration, and was
originally meant as a warning to men about having sex with strange women, but
Lichtenstein has cleverly reversed perspectives. In Teeth, this shocking anomaly
evolves into a David Cronenberg-like expression of psychic distress, as a prim teenage
girl undergoes a coming of age that's frightening at first, then oddly
emboldening, once she realizes her sexual leverage. It's a brilliant concept
for a horror movie, not least because the genre is usually so dedicated to male
gratification, but the material requires a consistent tone, and first-time
director Lichtenstein (son of pop artist Roy) can't quite get a handle on it.

If nothing else,
Lichtenstein has made a great discovery in Jess Weixler, who proves adept at
expressing every stage of her character's development, from good-girl naïveté
to trepidation and shock to a frightening, darkly funny sort of
self-possession. Playing the confident leader of a youth-abstinence group,
Weixler wears her "promise ring" defiantly, as if it were an amulet to ward off
the mockery of her crude, sinful high-school peers. She embarks on a tentative
romance with another ring-bearer (Hale Appleman), but when they retreat to a
Garden Of Eden-like idyll, he tries to take advantage of her. Then Weixler
discovers her unique anatomical gift/curse, which initially horrifies her, but
also gives her the power to thwart any unwanted trespassers.

In many ways, Teeth resembles Abel Ferrara's
1981 cult classic Ms. 45, another female-empowerment fantasy about a violated
woman—in this case, a mute seamstress—who takes revenge on men, though
her vengeance is lascivious and predatory. As the seamstress "speaks" through
her gun, the film follows her headlong descent into madness, ending with a
memorable fever-dream of a climax that takes her death wish as far as it can
go. Though Weixler's increasing awareness of her body—or at least, her
ability to control her Kegel muscles—makes her revenge a little more
nuanced, Teeth
lacks the purposefulness of Ferrara's film, and it eventually lapses into a
crude succession of dismemberments. Still, the conceit alone has considerable
[fill in cheesy dental metaphor here] and the key scenes pay off in deliciously
nasty camp horror.